Although the prior post focused on the Family Night question, I also remarked that “the notion of a pitcher boosting attendance is usually bunk, and there’s little reason to think differently in this case,” adding that “the 3 biggest home crowds came to see Catfish Hunter (twice) and Blue Moon Odom.”

I should have looked more deeply, or else left that question alone. Vida Blue in 1971 averaged much bigger crowds than any other A’s starter, even the reigning ace and 3-time All-Star Hunter, who had a fine year himself (21-11, 2.96). This table shows the average attendance for each 1971 Oakland starter, in total and then broken out by home (H) and road (R):

SP

GS

Avg

Net

Net %

GS-H

Avg-H

Net-H

Net %-H

GS-R

Avg-R

Net-R

Net %-R

Blue

39

23,110

9,854

74%

20

18,259

7,023

63%

19

28,216

12,940

85%

Hunter

37

14,719

-1,200

-8%

20

12,775

-259

-2%

17

17,005

-1,707

-9%

Dobson

30

10,403

-6,440

-38%

17

6,328

-8,406

-57%

13

15,731

-3,127

-17%

Odom

25

16,183

639

4%

11

15,355

2,760

22%

14

16,833

-1,838

-10%

Segui

21

12,526

-3,585

-22%

10

11,557

-1,612

-12%

11

13,407

-5,731

-30%

Fingers

8

9,650

-6,306

-40%

3

12,612

-372

-3%

5

7,874

-11,175

-59%

Gardner

1

15,808

166

1%

0

0

0

0%

1

15,808

-2,574

-14%

TOTAL

161

15,643

81

12,970

80

18,350

Notes:

“Net” figures compare the pitcher’s average attendance to the team’s average for games not started by that pitcher.

Doubleheaders were counted twice, crediting the day’s attendance once for each starting pitcher. Thus, these team averages do not match the official figures.

It’s interesting that Blue’s biggest impact came on the road, where the average crowd for his starts was 85% larger than for all other Oakland road games, a gain of almost 13,000 fans:

He drew Detroit’s largest crowd after Opening Day, larger even than a Sunday doubleheader featuring Denny McLain‘s return; the July 25 win put him at 19-3 with a 1.37 ERA.

He captured the Royals’ attendance crown.

The largest Angels crowd turned out for Blue (and red & white) on July 4.

He pitched to two of the four biggest crowds to RFK Stadium in the Senators’ final season; one of those games drew over 40,000, while the prior two in the series combined for just 12,000.

More than 30,000 saw Blue in the Bronx on June 1, when the previous day’s doubleheader drew 10,000 less.

Of the seven Oakland games that drew at least 40,000 fans that year, Blue started six, all on the road (and went 5-1).

So while the vast majority of attendance claims for star pitchers aren’t worth a rain check from a completed game, Vida Blue was definitely a huge draw in 1971 — just as another young Golden State southpaw would become ten years later. And your humble narrator is duly … humbled.

Richard @56 — The total attendance listed on the ’76 Tigers team page (1,467,020) doesn’t match the totals of each individual listed game (1,471,533).

I confirm the home averages you presented for Fidrych and for all other starters — 33,649 and 13,965. However, for these purposes, I think it’s better to double-count the crowd at a doubleheader, and by that method I get 15,687 for the average of all other starters. Even so, Fidrych more than doubled the rest.

No experience in baseball frustrated me more – or causes me more regret today – than the fact that I was overseas all of ’76 and never even had a chance to see Fidrych on TV. All I could do was read brief reports in the English-language newspaper and Time or Newsweek and pray that he’d still be pitching when I got back. My prayers were not answered.

Scott — Your assumption illustrates why I go out of my way to say that cases such as Blue, Fidrych and Valenzuela are exceptions. In general, ace pitchers have very little impact on attendance.

Take Nolan Ryan. He broke out in 1972, then started throwing no-hitters in 1973. His first no-no came on May 15, on the road. His next home start, 4 days later, drew 15,000 fans — on a Saturday. They drew 1,000 less on Friday, and 1,000 more on Sunday. No impact.

His 2nd no-no was July 15 in Tiger Stadium (the only no-hitter I’ve ever attended). At home 4 days later, 21,000 on a Thursday night to see Ryan against Baltimore. On Friday, same foe, 40,000 showed up. Maybe it was a promotion, as the Saturday-Sunday tilts averaged less than 14,000. Still, hardly a phenomenon.

In his last start that year, Ryan had a chance to break Koufax’s season strikeout record, and so he did. But only 9,000 turned out.

Bill James debunked this myth a long time ago. He found that the identity of the starting pitcher was a very minor factor in individual game attendance; the main factors (in no particular order) were the day of the week, whether the home team had been winning, the popularity of the opponent, the weather, and promotions.

’73 Angels were 4th in a 6-team division, with a decent 79-83 record. They were middle of the pack in attendance, just topping a million, averaging about 13K.

Ryan did draw almost 30,000 at home in the start after his 4th career no-hitter, in 1975. But the start after his 5th no-no (1981) drew about the same as the night before (25K), with the host Reds and Ryan’s Astros going down to the wire for the 2nd-half crown.

Randy Johnson drew 15,000 in Comiskey after his first no-no in 1990 — about the same as the previous night’s game between the same teams. The start after his 20-K game in 2001 drew 32K at home, a little less than the previous day’s game between the same teams.

Roger Clemens’s first 20-K game came in April 1986, when his star was just rising. His next game, a Sunday, drew 25,000, or 5K more than the day before. In the start after his 2nd 20-K game, Sept. ’96, a modest 23,000 came to Yankee on a Monday; the Sunday game in that series drew 34K and Saturday 55K, and Boston’s home game Tuesday drew 29K.

Scott @53 — That’s true, Ryan drew huge crowds in ’93. If I were an owner deciding how much salary a player is worth, I would definitely consider whether he was an iconic 25-year veteran holding various all-time records who was now embarking on a farewell tour.

Not many fit that bill, though.

I’d be very surprised if any modern pitcher had more than one year as a significant attendance draw. As a fan, there’s only one “first time” to see the latest phenom. Even if they continue to perform at a very high level, the novelty wears off. By the end of Fernando’s career, nobody was dazzled by how he rolled his eyes towards heaven just before he delivered; it was old hat. It’s just the way of the world.

I’m sure the readers of this site have seen some great games Luis. Having never lived in the US I have a pretty small selection of games to choose from, but I feel pretty privileged to have attended Greg Maddux’s 300th win. Best individual performance was probably Tim Lincecum’s 15K game.

Blue was THE MAN in 1971, I remember it fairly well. Just a flame throwing phenom. He and Lolich had an enormous number of innings if I recall right. Possibly the last guy with a legit chance to win 30 games.

It’s interesting looking at those attendance figures, that the A’s were more or less suffering with the same problem they have ever since–small crowds. However, I believe 1971 was the first year they showed the real promise that made them the mini-dynasty they became the next three years, so the fans were just beginning to be drawn in most likely. It was a heckuva run though–white shoes, flashy uniforms, moustaches, interesting players, crazy owner.

According to Wikipedia, the latest census puts the San Francisco/Oakland metropolitan statistical area (MSA) as the 11th most populous in the U.S., with about 4.4 million. That’s just a little less than Boston and a little more than the Detroit and Phoenix MSAs.

The Tigers drew 3 million in a pennant year and it’s considered a great feat. The Bay Area teams, also in pennant years, combined for over 5 million. That’s a pretty strong fan base there. Oakland’s problem is the breakdown: Giants 3.4mm, A’s 1.7mm.

It might seem that SF has a natural advantage, and maybe they do. But in the 20 years before SF’s new park (1980-99), Oakland outdrew SF by 1.67mm to 1.56mm per year. Since the new park opened, SF has dominated by 3.19mm to 1.84mm.

I would never advocate spending public funds on a baseball stadium. But it would be really interesting to see the effect of a modern facility in Oakland.

Just for giggles, though … Wilbur Wood was the most effective and valuable pitcher in 1971. More innings than Blue, better ERA+, tougher opponents. Blue started 16 games vs. teams at .500+ and 23 against losing teams; Wilbur’s starts were split 22 apiece.

Wood’s 11.5 WAR that year ranks 8th in modern history. Out of 6 such years in the CYA era, Wood is the only one who didn’t cop the prize. The others: Gooden ’85, Carlton ’72, Clemens ’97, Pedro 2000, Gibson ’68.

Well, WAR is what it is, but Wood’s total run average was much worse than Blue’s: 2.56 vs. 2.11 – 25% of Wood’s runs allowed were uneared. In Wood’s case, the likelihood (although I haven’t researched it) is that those unearned runs were at least as much tied to his knuckler as to poor fielding skills, and were a hidden cost that may have contributed directly to some of his losses. I thought Wood was a wonderful phenomenon during his years as an uberstarter, but I think the Cy Young voters got it right in ’71.

It’s true that there were 22 passed balls with Wood pitching, and only 10 with the rest of the team. The impact of those extra bases, however — since few of them actually put a man on base — would not likely be large.

Meanwhile, Wood pitched 23% of Chicago’s innings and allowed 26% of their unearned runs. Tommy John allowed 23 UER in 229 IP; Wood allowed 24 in 334 IP. The evidence, in addition to what bstar cited, is that the ChiSox were a lousy defensive team.

Ha. PPFp is in the WAR section, and it’s basically an average of all the 3-year park factors of the parks that the pitcher pitched in over the course of the year, weighted to the exact number of batters faced in each park. That’s pretty thorough, I think.

Interesting fact about Vida Blue- I believe he is the only pitcher to have a 300-strikeout season, and never reach 200 K’s in another season…

That summer of ’71 was fun for me- saw Vida Blue pitch an 11-inning, 17 strikeout game in July, then saw James Rodney Richard make his major league debut at Candlestick two months later with a 15 strikeout effort…

Wow, I see that J.R. fanned Willie Mays 3 times that game. There’s a passage in Joe Posnanski’s The Machine about a 19-year-old Gary Nolan whiffing Willie 4 times in just his 11th MLB game (June 7, 1967 — 15 Ks for Nolan). It was the first time Willie had ever K’d 4 times in a regulation contest, or against a single pitcher. The next day, Joe writes, Willie sought out the kid during pregame shagging and told him, “Son, I was overmatched.”

I remember listening to the Gary Nolan game on the radio. I believe he was interviewed on the Giants’ pre-game show (15 minutes long in those days!), as he was from Oroville, a bit north of Sacramento. He struck Mays out 3 times on nothing but fastballs, and Willie McCovey hit a 3-run homer in the 8th to win the game. Gary Nolan’s arm problems were unfortunate- would have been fun to watch him progress from 18 with that great fastball…

Though Gary Nolan was amazing as a young pitcher, I’m more fascinated by the transformation he made once the blazing speed left him, and especially when he finally made it back after missing almost 2 full years.

For his first 5 years, age 19-23, Nolan averaged 6.7 SO/9 and 2.8 BB/9. At age 24, those rates fell to 4.6 SO/9 and 1.5 BB/9; his control went from good to great.

And after the surgery, he couldn’t fan a soul, but his control was otherworldly: For 1975-76 combined, he averaged just 3.7 SO/9, but a microscopic 1.1 BB/9, leading the majors in control both years, and posting a solid 107 ERA+. Deduct the intentional walks and his rate was 0.96 BB/9 for those 2 years.

John, you’ve mentioned James’s study before – can you point us to it? It doesn’t seem to be in any of the items of his I have around the house (including the Historical Abstract).

It doesn’t feel surprising that Blue escaped James’s model: he was incredibly exciting (I was one of the masses crowding in to see him in Detroit). What made Blue such a sensation – apart from his amazing season and his perfect baseball name – was that 1971 was set up by his explosive appearance in 1970: as a September call-up, he’d pitched a one-hit shutout, and then a no-hitter ten days later against the division leading/winning team. Look at that sentence in the post about his Detroit appearance: 19-3 (and over 200 K) in *July* with an ERA of 1.37 as a rookie (well, not technically, but really)!

The parallel with Valenzuela’s ’81 start is a good one, but Valenzuela’s invincibility began to crack much earlier.

The thing that Valenzuela, Fidrych, and Blue have in common is that their exceptional drawing power was tied to their rookie status and the notion that they represented something really new. Ryan, your counter-example, had an erratic start, and was overall only an above-average pitcher with well recognized weaknesses. His break out period wasn’t of the same type and his run at the SO record was not only a long shot (he needed 16, and got them), but it’s questionable how many LA area fans would have been excited to see an 8 year-old “adopted native son’s” record broken by a less charismatic player.
So I wonder whether, if you were to restrict the data to attendance effects of true “pitching sensations,” like Blue et al. (and shorter-term situations like McLain’s run-up to 30 games in ’68 – a truly mind-blowing event), you wouldn’t find that James’s findings don’t apply.

Here’s another one — a thread on a Posnanski post about James, with a commenter quoting JoePos (I think — can’t find the full post): “Take one question in particular: Do great and exciting pitchers like Nolan Ryan draw more fans than others? Why that question? Who really cares? But I think that question was a particular breakthrough for Bill James because it seemed so obvious (OF COURSE Nolan Ryan outdrew other pitchers) and it was relatively easy to answer…. And what he found was: No. Nolan Ryan absolutely did not draw more fans than other pitchers.”http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsstand/discussion/joe_posnanski_moneyball_and_the_ballad_of_bill_james

P.S. This is a little weird — I googled “Bill James + starting pitcher affect on attendance”, and the #6 hit was this post. I’m not ready for Being John Malkovich yet!

Thanks, John. I appreciate the work. I’d found the Posnanski post through a Google search too, but was hoping to find the James original – I’m not doubting its existence; I have a vague memory of it and wanted to read it. I have no doubt James is right in general; I was just interested in how he conceived “conventional wisdom” in refuting it.

One of the strings in your link mentioned an interesting issue that was in my mind. I can recall, when a kid, waiting to look at the pitching match-ups in the morning paper to decide whether I’d take the subway to the park (I had an agenda – see the Yankees lose – so I was always more inclined to go if Frank Lary was pitching). Information on rotations and scheduled starters was harder to come by 50 years ago, so unless there was some specific publicity about a particular pitcher in the news, fans would have been much less likely to be able to make advance plans to see particular pitchers.

On the other hand, think of the match-up of September 6, 1912, when Walter Johnson “defended” his AL record of 16-straight wins against Joe Wood, who had won 13 straight. I’ve stolen this paragraph from a SABR journal article by Emil Rothe:

“Jake Stahl, Boston manager, aware of the sporting nature of the proposal, agreed to start Wood a day earlier. The fans responded over 30,000 strong far more than Fenway Park could accommodate in those days. On the day of the game, fans who could not be seated overflowed onto the playing field. Standing room was established behind ropes in front of the outfield walls and bleachers. Other spectators crowded along the foul lines. The teams were not even able to use their own dugouts, but were obliged to use chairs set up in front of the multitudes ranged along the foul lines.”

Wood won 1-0, of course. (There’s a great photo of Wood trying to warm up in the middle of a crowd of men wearing straw hats and ties – it’s in The Glory of Their Times.) Imagine how important baseball must have been for that sort of turnout to occur on short notice in the days before the internet, before TV – before radio!

According to the Charlton Chronology the run scored by the Red Sox came on back-to-back doubles by Tris Speaker and Duffy Lewis. Speaker’s double was hit into the overflow crowd and would have otherwise been an easy out.

That matchup between Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood always makes me think of an article
that Roger Angell wrote for the July 20, 1981
issue of the New Yorker magazine.

It is titled, “The Web of the Game.” Roger Angell picks up a soon to be 92-year-old, Smoky Joe Wood and takes him to a game between
Yale (where he had coached the baseball team from 1923-42), and St. Johns. The pitchers that day in West Haven, Connecticutt were Ron Darling and Frank Viola.

but it’s not clear whether he mentioned Ryan specifically in either case; apparently the initial impetus to conduct the research was a comment by a NY sportswriter’s about Tom Seaver’s effect on attendance at Shea.

What an interesting link – thank you, David. It brought back to mind the freshness of reading those early Abstracts; I doubt I’ve ever seen the very first ones, though I do remember that they were at one time stapled.

It’s hard to tell from Rich Lederer’s summary just what James wrote about pitchers as draws in the ’78 Abstract (and the word “attendance” draws no hits for the later Abstract abstracts), but judging from the account of the ’77 discussion, James found three pitchers who had significant impact on attendance in 1976: Fidrych, Randy Jones, and Tom Seaver. Fidrych was, as we’ve discussed, a case of the Young Pheenom effect. But Jones – in his CYA year – and Seaver – in a mediocre year for him – are more in the model of Pillars of the Franchise, which is just where I think we would have expected an attendance boost according to common wisdom (of course, there would have been other teams whose Franchise Pillars, if they had one, did not draw, which was James’s main point). So perhaps what we should be drawing from James’s analysis is not that the identity of the starting pitcher has little effect on attendance, but that its effect cannot be assumed as it occurs only in the rare cases of pitchers of various types (Nolan Ryan clearly not being such a case).

Tough to separate McLain’s pursuit of 30 wins from Detroit’s chasing their first pennant since 1945. I do find apparent attendance boost both home and away in some of his September starts, but then his final road start — in Baltimore, with chance for win #32 — drew 8,000.

I would not doubt that a pitcher chasing an historic seasonal feat could be a draw for some number of games. But over the course of a season, I think only the rare “phenom” can do it.

And not every phenom; and sometimes it’s hard to separate the factors.

In 1945, Boston rookie Dave “Boo” Ferriss won the first 6 starts of his MLB career, with 3 shutouts; the 6th game was a 1-hitter. His 7th start, at home, drew 4,306; he won again. His 8th start, at home again, was a doubleheader that drew just 9,389. (BTW, he won that one as well, 5-2, on a tidy 14-hitter.) The Red Sox were bad that year, finishing 7th. A phenom on a lousy team may not be a draw.

In ’46 Ferris again started out blazing, winning his first 10 decisions en route to a 25-6 season. But this time, the BoSox were also smoking. When Ferriss went for his 10th straight win, the club was 38-9(!) and going for *its* 10th straight win. They drew 33,000 to a Sunday doubleheader. How many came for Ferriss?

Yes, for McLain, the big draw ends with number 30. When I was looking at this earlier this evening, I came across McLain win number 31 at home – 9100 loyal fans – and saw that the night before there had been 46,000 – for Joe Sparma! So James’s theory holds. But wait! – Sparma’s game was the date the Tigers were first able to clinch the pennant after waiting since 1945, and they did, at home. So McLain, one day late and one victory over, was simply an anticlimax. And, in fact, I remember thinking exactly that way (“Well, that’s nice.”), after holding my breath each time he’d pitched from midseason on.

As for the Boo Ferriss phenomenon, I’d guess WWII had something to do with the tepid response in ’45. After all, Boston attendance in ’45 was 600K, so Ferriss’s 8th start was, at least, above average – and you have to wonder whether any player on any team in ’45 could have been perceived as a pheenom, given the competitive environment.

Thanks, Luis! My home in southwestern Westchester County has been among the lucky ones; most of my town has been without power since Monday night, but we only lost our phone/internet/cable. And I have a full tank of gas in the car.

The only two pitchers that I would consider were really a “phenom” during their rookie years are Dwight Gooden and Hideo Nomo. The others, I don´t remember a great deal of publicity about them, although I wasn´t born until Montefusco´s ROY season.

Before you made that list, I was going to ask for a Fernandomania attendance analysis, but I´m not sure if I want to make my memories being erased by facts.

All this threads about Vida Blue remind me of one of the first books I read in English. It was Rob Neyers´s Big Book of Facts (or something like that), were stories that were in the popular domain, are corrected by numbers and actual facts.

I agree, Luis. I had the same thought, that most of these pitchers didn’t have the hype factor of Fidrych/Fernando. I was going to do an attendance study of Fernandomania, but I’m just not up for it right now.

Fernando definitely was a draw in ’81. It’s hard to tell so much in the home games, since LA averaged over 43,000 at home. But their 6 biggest road crowds (38,000+) all saw Fernando pitch.

And he was still an attendance phenomenon in ’82; 4 of their top 5 road crowds saw Valenzuela, the exception being a SF game on the final weekend with pennant implications that drew 53K to Candlestick. (Fernando started the last game of the year; SF was eliminated, but they had a chance to knock out LA, and 47K came to see that mission accomplished.)

But then he had a couple of so-so years, and after that he was just another good pitcher.

So, in the 6 road starts from the beginning of May to the strike, the Dodgers drew an average of 37,264 in Fernando starts and 19,891 in the other games. He almost doubled the crowds on the road for those two months.

Other points:
– Best home draw in a Gooden start – Cubs with Dick Ruthven starting
– 2nd best home draw in a Gooden start – Cubs with Dick Ruthven starting (not a typo)
– 6th best home draw in a Gooden start – Dodgers with Valenzuela starting (go figure)
– Best away draw in a Gooden start – Dodgers with Valenzuela starting (that figures)

Doesn’t mean anything, but I thought I’d mention it anyway:
– the four lowest attendance figures in Gooden’s away starts (in Montreal, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati) all went to extra innings, the only extra inning games among all of Gooden’s starts that year.

I ask because Gooden was great in his rookie season but took it to another level entirely in ’85. My remembrance of it was that Goodenmania didn’t really reach critical mass until ’85, but you’re the Mets fan and I’m sure you remember it more vividly than I.

I put Gooden’s ’85 season on the very short list of the greatest pitcher seasons of the last fifty years.

That was 9/7/84, my first Mets game since leaving Ann Arbor for NYC that August. A throng of 46,301 at a Shea showdown with the 1st-place Cubs. Gooden came in with a 5-start win streak, then tossed a 1-hit shutout with 11 Ks, the lone hit a Keith Moreland dribbler towards 3B to start the 5th. Foster hit a 3-run shot off Ruthven, Straw hit a 2-run blast off Rick Reuschel, Sandberg (his MVP year) fanned twice and grounded out. The energy was infectious, and I was hooked.

That was Gooden’s signature game to date (92 game score), but his next outing was a 16-K shutout (93 GSc), followed with another 16 Ks in a 2-1 loss. That was the high K figure between 1980 (18 by Gullickson) and 1986 (20 by Clemens). No NL pitcher topped 16 until 1990 (18 by Ramon Martinez).

Gooden would never top the 93 game score from his first 16-K effort. He would match the 16 Ks once in ’85, and had no other 15-K games in his career. (Sigh.)

I was at that game, too. My recollection is that Knight didn’t attempt a throw on Moreland’s squib, and I was mad at him for not at least trying and perhaps drawing an error on the play. I mean, the Mets were already up 7-0 by the 5th, what he did have to lose? And then Gooden might’ve had the Met’s first no-hitter…